Destructoid Review: Assassin's Creed - 5.5

"Assassin's Creed is a disappointing, repetitive game filled with horrendously long and unnecessary cut scenes, a boring plot, tedious chores, and significant difficulty problems - it's a game with a few great ideas but absolutely no idea how to implement them...In conclusion, lower your expectations, don't play for more than three hours at a time, and don't pay more than nine bucks to get a hold of it. Assassin's Creed is an above average game...but just barely."

well personally i think it is a mix of GTA and Metal Gear. So far i love this game and i only got it today. As of right now i am playing it more than COD4 about 70-30. Hope everyone else is smart enough to judge it after they play it, not before.

Again, you all disagree.. Yet, I have proof on my blogsite. I reviewed it well in advance, got flank for it. Said I didn't have it... Said I was lying. Said this and that... Well, funny how my score and everything I said about the game "well ahead of any review" came true. Asscreed is just that ASS! Not even Jade Raymonds, could save it.

This is exactly what LAIR fans have been saying for the longest. I don't know when these ridiculous reviews will stop - if ever, but I am throughly tired of it.

These edotorial gaming sites just see the community as puppets. If a competing forum is getting more hits on their website they jsut throw some contraversy like "MGS 4, pretty but boring 3.5/10" and they instantly get flooded with hits from gamers flocking in their trying to voice their opinions on the review.

They jsut take the community and industry as a joke now, it's jsut gotten way out of hand.

reviews aren't worth much anymore. You have to go by how you feel. I liked Lair and still do. I'm in the minority but I am a minority so I'm used to that. LOL

Reviewers just want there site to get more hits so they can get more advertising dollars. It's really a disservice for us gamers but we have to be smart and test a game for ourselves. It's the only way.

I agree, the current review situation is just laughable for me, although in a sad way. Yeah, of course a game is a subjective experience (what isn`t really ?), but there should be a little more consistency in the reviews.

If a game isn`t good, it also needs to be better pointed out why it isn`t. A lot of the reasoning (don`t really want to call it that, but...) i`ve heard in some reviews, just contradict the score they`ve given too, like GameSpot`s Ratchet review to name one. They need more and/or more professional game reviews i think.

Keyser, you`re probably right about the hits for the site, even though it could just mean sloppy journalism in some cases ;)

I trust my friends recommendations much more the site reviews anyway. To try the game for yourself is always better than any review though, either from friend or foe ;)

Assassins Creed is boring.. Very boring. It's tedios and, you're right, it's not for everyone. AAA games are for everyone... So, by that merit, this game isn't AAA. Everyone has their taste... me, I didn't like it. I got mine for free at my work when they came in so I'm not complaining and I'm giving it away on myblogsite like I did with VF5, Ridge Racer 7, Fight Night 3 and Rainbow six. That's why people love me... cause I give back.

Thinks hes some kind of reviewer.I got news for you,anyone can write crap on a Myspace blog.You should stay on Myspace and leave N4G and the Playstation Blog alone.All you do is talk sh!t.Go get a Wii you are not worthy of the PS3 or the 360.Oh, and nothing is for everyone.Except Oxygen...I think we all like to have that.

guys. please just push the ignore button. We could do without the badmouthing, it's annoying enough to read the fanboys warbabble. let the guy be, he has a valid point imho. and a right to his opinion.

It may not exactly live up to all the hype that it has received, but it is by no means an average game. Terrific story line, great visuals, huge environment to explore, and just plain FUN! To each his own. I can see where some people would give it a 7 and some would give it a 10. Personally I believe it to be a solid 9 and an experience not to be missed. Just like the reviewers.....DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

Man, Destructoid, don't let this dude do reviews. Kids, if you want to know more about it, rent it, watch videos on it, watch a friend play it. Me, personally, I give it thumbs up. Try it out. Man these harsh reviews begging for attention blows.

Now had AC implemented gamplay that was radically new like heavy motion sensing control gameplay, it probably would have gotten it's fair share of 2.5s

It's a shame how these trully next gen titles (current gen) that introduce new takes on gameplay are being shot to hell by reviewers. They cry for new and innovative and want new stuff but they contradict themsleves by giving 4s and 5s to these types of great new games but embrass & hand out 10s to old gameplay mechanics like halo3 & Metriod.

It jsut makes no sense what's happening with editorial reviews this gen. I think this kind of editorial reviewer system is old and unneccesary nowadays. There's a huge variety to accesible media that we gamers can use to help oursleves with game info, we don't need gaming sites for this anymore.

Gaming web sites should really be limited to news and/or community forums by gamers. Their review methods are jsut archaic and played out.

You raise an interesting point again. But i don`t know if a game should get high praise just because it introduces something "new" (even though new and next-gen are expressions which in itself are debatable).

It also has to be executed well in my opinion. If the original idea fails due to execution, but still is a great idea, it most likely will be pick up by some others and made the way it should. Maybe it`s not always fair, but that`s how it is. Like foreign movies with great ideas, but don`t have the Hollywood execution, or Killswitch before Gears.

there's nothing next gen about it. it's definetly more linear than gta, the ai is crap, the stealth is ten steps back from the first hitman (you can't even disguise yourself), and the graphics are choppy and buggy (atleast on the ps3). it's just a shadow of the colossus and hitman copycat, and a bad one at that.. then again, I haven't seen any games worthy of calling next gen yet, maybe mass effect will do it. uncharted certainly has true next gen graphics, but it's a pretty trad game (nothing wrong with that if you do it well).

...and I much prefer AC to CoD4. What game isn't repetitive in some respect? I think that I compare this game in a lot of ways to Oblivion. Oblivion got so much praise because you could go anywhere and do anything, but it was also repetitive (Go to gate of Oblivion, sword fight little red guys, close gate, repeat...)

I've only played AC for about three hours so far and maybe it'll get boring, but so far I'm really enjoying it.

Cause they are a pain in the ASS...no pun intended(yes pun intended).
This site is always stirring up controversey from Halo 3 to a number of other quality titles.
This is what happens when a wanna be up and coming site wants to brandish their big new shiny nuts and say...LOOK AT ME, i'm a complete joke. No gamer in their right mind would turn to this site for an honest insightful review. They're like the National inquirer of gaming journalism..next story Master chief seen giving the Arbiter a reach around. I mean come on.
In cnclusion I feel Assassin's Creed is a quality title that is a true next-gen experience. There are some faults but by no means a 5.5 game, That would mean it's worse than a majority of the recently released games..bull!
Shove it Destructards!

I know alot of my friends that hate stealth base games. If your one of those people, don't expect to fall in love with this game just cause it was hyped up. No matter how much hype it received it's not going to change your mind if you don't like stealth base games. If you only like action games go play a hyped up action game. But to those of us who enjoy stealth base games it could be great.

Seems like every time I've been in Game Stop for the last year they've been trying to convince me to pre-order this game. I never did. When I saw all those ads on Southpark a few weeks ago, I knew right away that this game sucks! The cut scenes they showed looked really, really boring and the gameplay looks like it has too much platform jumping.

At this point there are too many AAA games already out to waste time and money on pre-ordering anything that is an unknown.

this review is complete bs. I own this game, and it's one of the best I've played in a while. I think it started off slow in the beginning, but you need to learn how to play it. Review sites need to go down. They're just hurting the industry with their overzealous beliefs that they are the final word on games. I guess I'd be angry too if I was writing internet reviews from my mom's basement. If you really care about these games getting bad reviews, then don't read them and hurt the site's traffic. Whoever employs these people will eventually tire of them when site traffic goes down because they're too incompetent to write an article worth reading.

Who do I think I am? I'm GAMESBLOW, king of Trolls... 98% approved gamefaqs forum poster and so much more. Like I said, I have the privelage of getting most every game 2 or 3 days before the average person does... Thus I take advantage of ti and write blogs about them for people who are unsure. Real opinions, not biased ones. You might not like my moniker as Gamesblow & that's fine. I'm just doing everyone a favor... I also give out free games on my blogsite atleast once a month... That is why people read my blog and know about me. It's because I'm legit. Like me, love me or hate me.

I don't remember ever seeing a game with such a vast discrepancy of scores between reviewers.It's not of the ordinary among movie and music reviews so I wouldn't take it too personally.Hopefully the good reviews will persuade most people to pick it up and give it a deserved chance.I think some reviewers need to take their personal feelings out of the equation when giving a score.Obviously this isn't everyones cup of tea but then you could say that about MGS,Halo 3,etc. but you don't see such extreme variances in scores for these.

if you liked the Prince of Persia games, you will probably like Assassin's Creed. it's practically an open-world Prince of Persia.

i knew this game was for me, when, about four or five hours into the game, i was given a short assignment to assassinate some punk guard who was harassing one of my fellow Assassins (though, honestly, i should have sliced his throat for being such a poor excuse for one of us). i followed guard along his route, snuck up behind him, and stabbed him in the heart. while he fell to the ground, gurgling his last breaths, i slunk away into an alley, climbing to a rooftop, the sounds of the crowd asking "what happened?" fading away while i made my escape.

i like the game alot. of course, i'm a die hard Prince of Persia fan, and thought that trilogy of games is one of the best in the industry.

this reliance on reviews is beginning to trouble me. when i was younger, we used reviews, sure, but in all honesty, most of the games being released back in the NES era sucked, so a review actually *MEANT something. if a game was good, believe me, they told you about it. it was more black and white back then.

now though, there are too many shades of gray with games, and you have too few people trying to account for the tastes of *MILLIONS.

i stopped reading the OPM review section when my tastes, and the tastes of their reviewers began to differ so much that i couldn't take their suggestions anymore following the hiring of some new staff (either i loved a game they hated, or they hated a game that i love).

you guys seriously need to either rent the game, or bite the bullet and buy the titles that interest you. just as long as you get your *ACTUAL HANDS on the game and play it for yourself.

i took a chance and bought the game Lair. i enjoyed it for a time (and beat it), but ultimately, it's a game i knew i wouldn't play again, once games like Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted came out, as those are more my types of games, so i traded it in (for Assassin's Creed, actually).

it's getting absurd that people are suddenly forsaking their own tastes for the tastes of, uh, other people? what the hell? anything else in our lives, we rely on our own opinions;

clothes: "i'll wear what i want"
women (and men for some): "i'll date who i want"
food: "i'll eat what i want"

but games? "uh, well, uh, that, um, guy, from, like, ign, said this game, that i really wanted to play sucked, so, uh, like, i don't want to get it now..."

I totally loved POP 1 and 3. I disliked AC from the get go. The sci-fi backstory is distracting, awkward and unnecessary, it doesn't pull you in like in POP, it's just an annoyance. The game doesn't do anything to challenge or inspire you. I get what it aims for, a bit of POP, a bit of GTA, Hitman and Shadow Of The Colossus, but there isn't anything that ties it all together. It doesn't have that spirit..

Yeah, and tetris is not repetetive pfff... AC is one of the best games I've played this year. The gfx are mind-blowing, and I really feel the ambience of the cities. For the first time in a game, a city feels alive.
How come games like orange box got 9 and 10s? The gfx are mediocre and just shooting at people gets very repetetive. AC should score above that.

honestlyy who eevr wrotee this review must be onee low life who cant get laid in his lifee ...tell me a game that isnt a little repetitive ....
myte as well just say - all u do in halo is go around shooting ppl and throww gernades ..:S

however I still think its alot better than 5.5, wtf? thats just a slap in the face to Ubi, yeah its repetitive and people need to stop making excuses like "all games are repetitive", sure thats true to some extent but its a devs job to make those (similiar/same) tasks varied enough where it doesn't get dull/boring, I still like the game but it seems to me Ubi could have a killer game on their hands if they just would have made some different choices and of course a solid framerate, but again a 5.5?= yeah maybe Destructoid does need the hits.

I read the article. The reviewer expressed his arguements and his point of view in a correct and interesting way. Yes, he bashed the game in many aspect, yet he recognized what he blieved, where it´s strong points ("Assassin's Creed will feel like one of the most fun games to come out this year -- thanks entirely to the fighting and freerunning mechanics")

Again, like any other review, it´s written by a person, with his own judging values and tastes. There is no such thing as true objectivity, and surely you cannot expect it when reviewing a game: there are so many factors that can make a game fun for some people and terrybly dull for others...

All in all, what remains a reliable rule of thumb (at least for me), and a quite obvious one is: if everyne says it is a great game, it must be at least a good one. In this case, it seems, the opinion is divided.